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The discrepancy in the year of Muhammad’s birth notwithstanding, some Muslims categorically maintain that he was born in the early hours of Monday, the 29th day of August, 570 A.D[1] - - an occasion that they observe each year with great fanfare. Contrary to this, and as is the case with Jesus Christ, the year of Muhammad’s birth has remained, and it would continue to remain, unknown to scholars as well as to the students of Islam. The celebrations that are held now to celebrate Muhammad’s birth, therefore, have no Islamic basis and these are mere traditions only.
At the time of Muhammad’s birth, the Arabs lived in a state of moral decadence. Though the institution of marriage existed among the Arabs for its namesake, they pursued extramarital sex at whim. On the subject of the Arabs’ fornication, Maxime Rodinson quotes Rabbi Wathan:
Nowhere in the world was there such a propensity towards fornication as among the Arabs, just as nowhere was there any power like that of Persia, or wealth like that of Rome, or magic like that of Egypt. If all the sexual license in the world were divided into ten parts, nine of these would be distributed among the Arabs and the tenth would be enough for all the other races.[2]
R. V. C Bodley tacitly concurred with Wathan, saying:
There was Amr Ibn al As, the son of a beautiful Meccan prostitute. All the better Meccans were her friends, so that anyone, from Abu Sofian down, might have been Amr’s father. As far as anyone could be sure, he might have called himself Amr Ibn Abu Lahab, or Ibn al Abbas or Ibn anyone else among the Koreishite upper ten. According to Meccan standards of that time, it did not matter who had sired him.[3]
According to historians, Muhammad was born during this period of time, and in one of the ten upper class Quraish families of Mecca. To those people, it did not matter who had fathered whom. All children, including Muhammad, born under that condition, however, always faced the question over the legitimacy of their paternity.
In spite of becoming the mother of a son, whom her society greatly valued, Amina continued to maintain her hatred towards the newborn boy. In order to take her vengeance out, she refused to suckle him, even when he was hungry.
Seeing the child’s suffering and to help him survive, Thuwaibah, a slave-girl of the child’s uncle Abu Lahab, took upon herself the responsibility to breastfeed him[4] until someone else was found to take him into her permanent care.
[1] Gulam Mustafa, Vishva Nabi, p. 40
[2] Muhammad, translated by Anne Carter, p. 54
[3] The Messenger, p. 73
[4] Adil Salahi, Muhammad: Man and Prophet, p. 23